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Waiting in the pickup line |
Five days a week, it’s the same thing. I leave the house at a certain time, carrying
a book or some manuscript I’m editing along with my red pen, and head to the 9
year-old’s school to wait in a long line for twenty-five minutes to pick her up
and take her home. I don’t mind
waiting. I’m a writer. My work goes with me no matter where I
am. It’s great to carry your world with
you. I’ve sat in the mall as the girls
had their nails done, outside a restaurant as we waited to be seated, and
outside of someone’s work waiting for their escape. I’ve become accustomed to making the most of
my time. Waiting for the 9 year-old to
get out of school is no different.
It’s become routine.
I inch my way forward in the long line of cars. Sometimes she’s out and waiting for me. Other times, she’s a tad tardy and I’m
waiting on her. Then the questions
start. “Did you remember your vocabulary
book? Your reading book?” Most often she has remembered. A couple of times she has had to go back to
her class and get them. Finally, we can
pull away from the curb and head home.
She reaches for a bottle of water in the cup holder, another
part of our routine. “School makes me
very thirsty,” she has told me and so a bottle of water is waiting. It wasn’t hers originally. It was mine and she took it. I’ve since learned to have a bottle there so
I can still drink mine. It has also
become an expectation and the first thing she reaches for.
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The hat helps her concentrate |
Then the questions continue.
“Did you have a good day? How
much homework do you have tonight?”
And then I always say, “Okay, give me three things that
happened to you today.”
After raising three boys, I have learned that unless you ask
them, they will not tell you. So, I
ask. And the 9 year-old tells me. “We had recess today.”
The key to finding out anything is to ask questions. And I am never happy with one sentence
answers. So I keep asking. “Oh?
What did you do at recess?” And I
am able to find out more from her that she would not have volunteered.
I also don’t allow certain answers; things I have discovered
are every day answers, so we tossed them out as unacceptable. It doesn’t count if she says she saw her
friends or her cousins. It also doesn’t
count if she tells me what she had in her lunch box. I was there when it was fixed. She can tell me if she was in trouble or
whether she had art class. I can ask
questions to those and get more info.
“What did you do in art class?
And why were you in trouble?”
Then we get home and the homework begins. A glass of water and an after school snack is
gathered together. I’m actually
struggling with this part now, because the girls have put me on another diet
and the snacks are not as rewarding as they were a week ago. Or as filling. Still we fix it and then she will work on
her homework while I am working on a manuscript. She gets stuck, I pause and we work out some
problems. Or I quiz her on her
multiplication tables or her spelling words.
She reads to me or I read to her.
We keep going until the homework is done and she can go and play or her
friends have rung the doorbell and my house is full of giggling girls. Well, it’s always full of giggling girls, but
these are younger, the giggles are higher in pitch.
It’s about an hour to an hour and a half, Monday through
Friday, August through May. It’s the
routine. It’s also how parents can find
out what is happening in their children’s lives. Questions that lead to answers that lead to
more questions. Sometimes, the answers
help us to help them, to guide them when they are having a hard time or
struggling with something at school.
Form your routines. Engage your
children in conversation and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Nosy parents are the best parents.
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The 9 year-old and this dude |
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Other posts you might enjoy ~ The Interruption of Interaction
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My son was in college when I asked this, but it's always good to keep asking questions nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteHe was living on his own with a friend just off-campus but always stopped by to visit with his mom and sister who lived in family housing on campus. (I graduated in May 2001 with 2 undergrad degrees - Philosophy / Latin, he followed that August - Philosophy / English) I had something cooking on the stove and was mending a garment, he came over and intellectual chit-chatting commenced. He said "Ma... Will, Chris, Dan and CW came over last night and we saw Caligula." Half listening and a little distracted by what I was sewing I interjected then asked "That's nice. Were they playing at the Blue Note?" My son looked at me blankly. "Ma. Caligula. The emperor." I came up for air at that point figuring he wouldn't be playing at the Blue Note...
LOL..Nice. Yeah, part of asking questions is listening to the answers. No multitasking with the little one.
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